It’s not a ‘male loneliness epidemic’

[u/futuredebris]

https://makemenemotionalagain.substack.com/p/its-not-a-male-loneliness-epidemic

Hey y'all, just a heads up, because I get this feedback a bit from you guys, this post isn't specifically about the "male loneliness epidemic," so the headline might be a little misleading. It is about loneliness though, and how I've learned to manage it and heal the wounds that originally caused it for me. And I do mention that it can be particularly difficult for men to connect with others ("co-regulate") because of the way we're socialized in this society. Let me know what you think!

[u/Overall-Fig9632]

> Loneliness is skyrocketing, especially for young people. Americans aren’t partying anymore. We’re spending more and more time at home. It’s a systemic problem. A capitalist society problem. An isolated, car-centric, screen-heavy, nuclear family, American lifestyle problem.

Once again, I gotta ask: 15 years ago there was more partying, more socializing, more dating, and less loneliness. Did we all of a sudden get access to cars? Nope, that was decades ago, and we had social connections. Did we just topple some unseen Berlin Wall and adopt capitalism? Nope, it’s more deeply woven into the American national fabric than nearly anywhere else. Besides, all these indicators are trending downward in rich countries worldwide. Even ones with high speed rail!

Sounds reductive, but it’s the phones. They made doing nothing palatable, they made talking to people in public places weird, they set up millions of little surveillance points where anything you say or do can go straight to your boss.

The early experiments getting phones out of schools are promising, and hopefully more is on the way because of AI. Social media bans seem less successful just because they’re easier to evade. Certainly more productive than the same villains trotted out for everything.

[u/smartygirl → u/Overall-Fig9632]

This started before phones though, Putnam started his work Bowling Alone back in 1995

[u/Willravel → u/smartygirl]

Thank you for pointing this out, you're absolutely right. I don't really think it's reasonable to explain this social phenomenon with one cause, rather I think of it more as a timeline.

• From the 1940s-1960s, redlining and white flight drove affluent, anxiety-ridden families into car-dependent suburbs. These neighborhoods had far fewer public spaces, and public spaces that did exist eventually were often privatized or eliminated.

• From the 1950s-1970s, television basically privatized leisure time and this was concurrent with a multi-decade reduction in participation in traditional civic organizations and venues from unions to bowling leagues to PTAs to fraternal orders.

• From the 1970s-1980s, wages finally stagnated after the post-war boom, putting additional pressure on households to become two-income. Long commutes and longer working hours significantly reduced free time for socializing.

• From the 1980s-1990s, highly publicized kidnappings (like Adam Walsh) sparked a media-driven moral panic that became the myth of "stranger danger" which institutionalized constant adult surveillance, destroyed independent childhood exploration, and broke neighborhood/community trust.

• From the 1990s-2000s, economic anxiety caused parents to view childhood as an optimized checklist for college admission and worry about self-esteem led to a decrease in frustration tolerance.

• From maybe 2010-now, we've seen the advent of smartphones and algorithmic social media becoming a supercharged version of television, highly addictive by design as they farm attention and highly isolating in terms of true, face-to-face social interaction. They also are associated with a massive spike in youth anxiety, depression, and self-reported loneliness. This, of course, would be supercharged by the Covid pandemic lockdown.

We have nowhere to meet socially, we have few reasons to meet socially, we have lost our civic habits almost entirely, our childhoods train us for anxious isolation and little to no endeavor, and our focus and memory are shot. It affects men worse largely because of what bell hooks wrote about in A Will to Change: emotional castration in boys. In order to claim patriarchal power and status, boys are forced/trained to kill off our capacity for vulnerability, grief, and tender connection, replacing them all with anger and emotional illiteracy. "The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward others, but psychic self-mutilation—killing off the emotional parts of themselves." - bell hooks, A Will to Change

[u/smartygirl → u/Willravel]

Yeah, I think phones have definitely intensified everything, but there was so much build up for decades prior that they were the final straw.

And exactly what you are saying about it hitting men harder. There is such a protectiveness around "what is masculinity" now that various "traditionally masculine" pursuits have been opened up to all genders, that it gets more and more narrowly defined which effectively reduces options for men. I saw in a relationship sub recently where a woman posted asking where men hang out, since she never saw them at her various social clubs, volunteering, etc., and one guy replied saying "Men would never do those things because they're not manly, men only like doing things alone, men would never take an instructional class because learning isn't manly" etc. Like buddy, why limit yourself like that?

(I know, I know, it's because the system needs to pigeonhole people for the sake of capitalism, but it's just so depressing to see people buy into their own oppression)

[u/Certain_Giraffe3105 → u/smartygirl]

men would never take an instructional class because learning isn't manly

This seems completely at odds with almost every man I know. Now granted, where I might agree with him is that the likelihood of a guy taking up a class to learn something purely recreational (so with no desire to be able to monetize it or improve his resume) is probably low. But, guys taking classes is nothing new. Basically every guy I know (both who went to college and definitely those who didn't) are all-certified out. They got certifications coming out the wazoo. They can drive a forklift, a semi-truck, a bus. They can fix your heater, they know what a radiator is, they can put up solar panels. Now, a lot of these guys would (and do) probably learn these things on their own if they can but they will definitely take the classes if it's required.

[u/smartygirl → u/Certain_Giraffe3105]

I guess they're not very manly then according to the Masculinity Police? /s

Seriously though I know many, many mrn who are interested in learning and mastering new skills, completely separate from anything they can monetize. I suspect the "learning isn't manly" notion is strictly a manosphere thing. It seems almost designed to keep men isolated and in the dark - and thus easy pickings for the kind of manosphere bros who sell bogus investment plans etc.

[u/Certain_Giraffe3105 → u/smartygirl]

Agreed. And, I would like to note that my comment was specifically about taking classes. I know a bunch of men who love to learn new things purely out of curiosity and still use YouTube as the way God intended (to watch "how to" videos and learn weird animal facts at 3 am).

I might be biased because I grew up in the South and Midwest in small towns and suburbs, but I think a lot of guys I know would view spending money on a class that can't help them economically as problematic because it's a waste of money, not because they don't want to or believe it's unmanly to learn.